


The (too) many lives of James Buchanan Barnes

by rosydays



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (TV)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Character Study, Gen, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-23 02:35:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30048636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosydays/pseuds/rosydays
Summary: I try and count. Try and order my rag bag of memories. I try and tally the importance of lives versus years. But I’m always losing. We’ve lived more lives apart than together. More years too.  Who am I (with Steve Rogers)? Who am I (without Steve Rogers)? Who am I-(In which Bucky reflects on the lives he has lived (the lives he has missed), thinks about his future and considers Sam's place within it)
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Kudos: 5





	The (too) many lives of James Buchanan Barnes

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really looking forward to the Falcon and the Winter Soldier this week(!!!) and this is my take on Bucky's character going into the show, a sort of bridge between where he is now and where I kind of hope he ends up going. 
> 
> (see notes at start of each chapter for specific CNs. Get in touch if you ever need more detail):  
> CN:  
> Brief discussion of bullying, implied complex relationships, offscreen torture, memory problems.

Steve and I. We’ve lived too many lives for two people. Had too many years and too few. When we were just a pair of kids in Brooklyn, we never really doubted that our fortunes would keep us running side by side. We didn’t have it all planned out, but we had our everyday. And our longings, our assumptions, our dreams. Most of ‘em made with words from both our mouths, gestures from both our bodies, actions we took thinking of the other. 

But now, I can barely count the lives I’ve lived, let alone remember the details. I can’t count the lives Steve’s lived. I can guess. Can mourn that I’ll never remember some of them (because I wasn’t there).

I try and count. Try and order my rag bag of memories. I try and tally the importance of lives versus years. But I’m always losing. We’ve lived more lives apart than together. More years too. Who am I (with Steve Rogers)? Who am I (without Steve Rogers)? Who am I?

**Before Steve**

I was James, Jimmy, Son, brother. I flopped onto my Ma’s lap after school, I remember the feel of that slightly scratchy fabric on my cheek, her hands carding through my curls, her scent relaxing me. I don’t recall her face. I hugged my sister when she was a tiny stumbling thing, tottering between my Ma and I. She was so soft, her skin, her barely there hair. Smooshing her little hands into my mouth and up my nose, giggling when I pulled strange faces. My Da is mostly loud voices and yes, some of them angry. But sometimes, he’d come home singing shanties. And his voice would get softer and softer until it was more a lullaby for my sister and I, as we lay curled into matching commas on our bed. I’d fall to sleep and dream of the ocean, of my boat and its bustling crew and of the fantastical strangeness of far away lands.

**With Steve**

I became Bucky, best friend and more, I suppose. I think I lived a lot of life with Steve, though not lives.

He was small, not soft like my sister, but bony, sharp. He’d lash out at his bullies and then he’d cut me to the quick for helping. But he was sweet too. Couldn’t hold a grudge, as a child. Never let the sun go down on an argument, said Sarah Rogers. We’d part with angry words. I’d feel discombobulated and my eyes would burn. I never knew what to say to calm him down, to keep him with me. But then later, I’d be teaching my sister catch in the street, or I’d be running errands for Ma, and Steve, maybe on his own jobs from Mrs Rogers, would shuffle around awkwardly and stutter out an apology. He might give me an interesting looking metal scrap he’d picked up from the street, an extra almond saved from the grocer who was sweet on Sarah Rogers, or just a smile and a call to adventure in the alleys of Brooklyn. He always had a good eye for noticing things, did Steve, and he liked to share them with me.

We grew up. I don’t know how much time we had, not really. I do remember loving him. Like when we got ourselves pissed to high heaven and ended up on Brighton Beach at sunrise. Steve passing me sea glass and both of us acting like the wind had changed and got our faces stuck on the biggest possible toothy grins. Or when Steve wrapped his arms around me on the bed we sometimes shared, in the dead of the night when I just couldn’t hold back the tears. When I told him I’d be stuck on those docks forever, that I’d never leave Brooklyn, never amount to anything, be just like my Da. When we took Becs out dancing, those times that my parent’s house was more loud than sea shanties turned lullabies. When even left-footed Steve spun Becs round a coupla’ times before leaving her to twirl with me. Both him and me shooting glares at any guy who looked at her funny.

Those years all blur together, too short and too oddly timeless. Layers and layers of memories all jumping into each other – I can be mostly a man, mopping the blood off Steve’s lip where he took it into his head to get into some idiotic fight instead of watching me flirt with the girl of the evening, and then I’ll be a child with my own bloody knuckles, propped against a wall with Steve next to me, both of us smiling, still clutching hands and trying to catch our breaths from dragging each other running through the streets.

**And then I left**

I was Barnes, recruit, private, sharp shooter, sergeant

And I don’t even know if I wanted to go. If I saw a chance at leaving Brooklyn, not forever, but just for a while maybe, and took it. One impossible opportunity in the midst of a world burning. If I thought that chance was worth leaving Steve. Becs. Ma. I know I was drafted, books tell me that, but there’s no one to tell me what I felt about it.

Steve says I was excited. But then, I remember waking up in what I’m mostly sure were the barracks at basic, and I’m always reaching for a hand that isn’t there. I’m feeling that same sick I felt on the nights when Brooklyn felt like a cage I couldn’t escape.

But I also remember how good I felt when my CO told me I had a knack for shooting. No one above me had praised me like that in a very long while. I think I remember learning guns. It’s hard. So many of my memories are me settling into the stillness with a gun. But I have flashes of two flesh hands on a rifle that still felt strange, flashes where my mind is too full to be really still, where I feel swooping nerves before I shoot and the urge to look over my shoulder for approval when I make my shot. 

I remember days and days of feeling scared, interspersed with brief periods of elation, camaraderie and drunkenness. I remember feeling so tired in the moments in between.

My memories often overwhelm me with their weight when I go looking around inside myself. But some, some are different. I recall feeling light, full of awe. We were crossing the ocean, we were days and days from the docks. In sequestered moments on deck, there was nothing around me but open water and endless sky.

**Was it a life?**

Azzano. It was, by all accounts, the beginning of one. But just like there’s so much mixed wrongly inside my head, this bit of my chronology is out of order – yes it must be the beginning of a life, but it’s sandwiched between two unrelated ones; my time in the army without Steve and my time, later, with him. It’s a blackspot in between that I can barely unpick from nightmares and what came after.

I remember screaming (but I remember so much of that). I remember the relief and guilt in the eyes of the men who would become the Howling Commandos. I remember hoping they would live, but in that moment hating them. I remember feeling disconnected, like I was walking in a dream, reading a story and all I had to do was wind back time and start again- and then the all consuming panic when I realised I couldn’t do that, I couldn’t-


End file.
